Why should Olympic participants represent countries?

Set aside for a moment the deferral of the 2020 Olympics to 2021, the absence of any meaningful spectators as participants compete in huge, new, empty arenas, and the mind-numbing variety and schedule of events, and my question would remain the same: What do countries have to do with the Olympics?

Also set aside the entire gender-preference issue, where once illegal cross-gender competition was considered abhorrent and now seems to be a basis for celebration among the woke, gender self selection crowd, while recognizing this idea that Olympic participants can choose not only their gender, they can also choose which country they represent. In this era of open borders, free migration, and a global world, what is the value or the purpose of identifying participants by their country?

Why not just individual Olympians compete as just that, individuals? And why limit the number of participants representing one country from participating if the thirty best competitors in that event all hail from one country? And why decide which 'sports' can be part of the Olympics schedule based on how many countries participate in that sport?

And there is no need for teams to be linked to a specific country. Yes, competitions like the World Cup allow fans from a country to go berserk over their national team, but they are no less berserk than the fans of professional football clubs. If you want the Olympics to repent the best athletes, the best teams, let those athletes select their gender and their team mates, and leave it at that. If an immigrant from Country A 'immigrates' to Country B, primarily if not exclusively to 'represent' Country B, how am I to feel, as a citizen of Country A or B about that athlete? To me, it's like the contrast between professional athletes and the soon-to-be-abandoned model for college athletes, where the professional athletes seemingly represent the city of the team for whom they play when, in reality, they are representing their own best interests with a personal contract that ties their allegiance to a particular team...until they move to another team and city. At least under the past college model, there could be some sentimental attachment via one's alma mater, but even that is exaggerated. College athletes transfer, and people with no direct connection to a college may be the most rabid of fans for that college's sports teams. Think of the now dated model of all those Catholics supporting Notre Dame athletics.

And this leads me to college athletics and new plan to allow college athletes to see their image, to create their own brand. The logic of that suggests to me that not only should the college that offers the student a scholarship should be able to claim a significant, mutually agreed upon share of the student-athlete's earnings, the IRS should treat the value of the scholarship -- full tuition, room and board, books, etc. -- as taxable income, regardless of the 'brand value' of the athlete. In effect, colleges pay athletes to play for them with a scholarship worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over four years, so the scholarship as well as any additional payment from the college or sponsors should all be treated as taxable income for any athlete on scholarship.

Following up on that, any scholarship should be treated as taxable income, or at least any tuition paid today that goes to a tax-free scholarship to any student should be treated as a tax deduction by the student paying a share of his tuition to go to a scholarship for another student. Of course, athletic scholarships can be funded by (tax deductible) non-tuition dollars, yet that only makes a stronger argument for taxing as income scholarships that come from donors to the athletic department or from ticket revenue generated by the department.

Going further, how are colleges or athletic departments worthy of being called "non-profits" or "not for profits" when clearly there is an annual reconciliation of revenues and expenses for the unit each year and that difference is no less a profit or a loss than with any private or public corporation subject to taxation.

It should be pretty clear that all the organizations or industries that claim special tax-free or charitable status are on pretty thin ice in making those claims, including colleges and hospitals. One of the revelations -- to me, at least -- during my last 10-15 years of college teaching, was the overwhelming impact on the economy of these seemingly non-capitalist organizations or industries, just as Peter Drucker suggested in the twentieth century, and that the American economy pretends that 'business' is somehow separate from the trillions of dollars flowing through 'industries' like higher education or healthcare. The recent study demonstrating the tremendous wealth associated with Social Security payments also shows the third 'industry' in America that continues to grow in leaps and bounds, and that is the 'retirement' or "retiree income" industries, as the number of Americans over the age of 65 who living on Social Security and Medicare has expanded from a few million to over forty million people just in the past forty years.

The 'bottom line' of this argument is that we should recognize people as individuals rather than as country representatives when it comes to the Olympics. And we should recognize income for what it is, and tax it fairly, equitably, rather than allowing some income to be 'tax-free.'